Verdi: La traviata

Maria Callas performed the role of Violetta in Verdi’s opera La traviata over 60 times during the 1950s, and a number of recordings exist of her interpretation. For many, the finest is the live recording made in May 1955 at La Scala, Milan, in a production directed by film-maker Luchino Visconti. Callas’ Violetta is a vulnerable heroine from the start, heedlessly abandoned in the scorching high notes of her Act I aria “Sempre libera.” The Act II outburst “Amami, Alfredo,” pleading for Violetta’s love to be reciprocated, has a primal desperation, while the death scene in Act III has the intensity only a great singing actress can generate. Conductor Carlo Maria Giulini brings both fieriness and ardent poetry to Verdi’s score, and while the sound is dynamically limited, the atmosphere of a historic evening in the theater is powerfully communicated, particularly in Callas’ gut-wrenching contribution.